Astounding Success for War Beneficiaries, Disaster for the US Nation
State, Death and Destruction of Iraq

By Hassan El-Najjar

ccun.org, March 19, 2008

Five years ago, the US forces invaded Iraq for the two false accusations
of linkage with Al-Qaeda and possession of weapons of mass destruction,
both of which were refuted by bipartisan committees investigating the
war.

The war was bipartisan, initiated by a Republican administration but
supported in Congress by both Democrats and Republicans alike. After
their victory in 2006 Congressional elections, Democrats did not stop
funding the war, as their constituents expected.

With regard to presidential candidates, there has been a difference. The
Republican frontrunner, John McCain, pledged to continue the Iraq war
for another 100 years. Democratic rivals, Hillary Clinton and Barack
Obama, pledged to end the war in 2009.

The Winners:

No doubt the war has its own constituents and beneficiaries, who have
been beating the drums of war since 1990. These are neither republicans
nor democrats. Rather, they are the beneficiaries of the well-entrenched
war industry in the US, and their representatives in government, media,
and religious institutions.

The Bush administration has added about $5
trillion to the national debt. Almost one trillion
dollars a year, happily approved by the rubber-stamp
Democratic-Republican Congress. These were lucrative
contracts accorded by the Departments of
Defense and Homeland Security to members of the ruling
capitalist class.

This class donates to religious institutions and to politicians from
both parties. It also indoctrinates the public through its
privately-owned corporate media, calming them down to be pro-war or at
least to coexist with the war culture.

The second major group of beneficiaries is the oil industry, which has reaped hundreds of
billions of dollars in the last five years. First, it destroyed the Iraq
Oil Company and replaced it. Second, it has been looting the American
people with continuous rising of gas prices, as they are paying now more
than $3 per gallon out from less than $1 before.

Prices of crude oil are decided in the New York Merchandise Exchange,
not in the Middle East or anywhere else, which is an arbitrary process
to make fortunes for members of the ruling capitalist class, as Sean
Hewitt put it.

The third major beneficiaries of the US invasions and wars in the Middle
East, particularly on Iraq, are the
Israelis and their Zionist supporters. The Israelis
received tens of billions of dollars in direct assistance from the Bush
administration. They had their strong adversary, the Iraqi Arab
nationalist state, destroyed by the United States, without the loss of
one Israeli soldier.

Zionist supporters of Israel, like Wolfowitz, Feith, and Pearl, have
tightened their control on US foreign policy, to the extent of planning
for the war and supervising its execution. After the war, they have been
successful in leading a national and international effort to starve the
Palestinian people and support the Israeli occupation government in its
continuous war to subjugate Palestinians indefinitely.

Inside the US, they have imposed the Israeli vision of security on the
American people, transforming the US into a police state, with a lot of
spying on citizens and silencing of dissent. More important was the Bush
administration "hands off" policy towards the Palestinian-Israeli
conflict, which gave successive Israeli governments a free hand to do
whatever they wanted to the Palestinian people. This included systematic
targeting of civilians, massacres, assassinations, kidnapping of
citizens and elected officials, closures, annexation of land,
demolishing of homes, and the siege of Gaza to starve Palestinians until
they surrender.

The Bush administration not only funded these Israeli atrocities and
crimes against humanity but also shielded the Israeli occupation
Apartheid government from any criticism in the UN.

The Losers:

The first losers of the US invasion of Iraq have been the
Iraqi people, whose state
was destroyed, their cultural entity was looted and dismantled, and
whose national unity has been blown up. Iraqis have been divided into
two major camps, one fighting with the US occupation forces and the
other fighting US forces and Iraqi forces fighting with them.
Relentless efforts have been made to divide Iraqis into racial and
ethnic enclaves and regions.

The outcome has been the killing of hundreds of thousands of Iraqis and
the displacement of millions, at least three millions of them have
become refugees in other countries. Horrors of wars, like Abu Ghraib and
ethnic cleansing attacks, will scar Iraqis for generations.

For other nations and peoples of the world,
it has been a very sad news indeed. It has opened the door for powerful
nations to invade and destroy smaller and less powerful nations and take
over their resources. It has been a big blow to the hope of resolving
world conflicts peacefully in the United Nations.

The second major losers have been the
American people, who have been forced to be $5 trillion
in debt to their ruling capitalist class. Their children and
grandchildren will be paying for this debt and the enormous amounts of
interests resulting from it. Many Americans also paid the ultimate price
of this war, as about four thousand soldiers have been killed and about
thirty thousands more have sustained serious injuries. Moreover,
Americans have been subjected to a continuous state of insecurity in
order to justify the continuation of the war. Last but not least,
Americans have been manipulated to surrender their civil rights, various
constitutional rights, and were made to tolerate violations of rights of
fellow Americans.

Finally, the United States as a nation
state has been a major loser in the permanent war
strategy of the ruling elite, who have their own global agenda, not
necessarily serving the United States. With this huge and unprecedented
national debt of $9.6 trillion so far, the US national economy has been
hit so hard that it may lead to financial collapse.

The US dollar is collapsing. It has lost about forty percent of its
value and nobody knows when the sinking will stop. Apologists and
propagandists try to tell us that this is good for the US exports. There
is no evidence that this is happening. Otherwise, we would have a
recovering economy by now. The stock market has been plunging too. There
is no evidence whatsoever indicating any benefits from the war for the
vast majority of the American people or for the US as a nation state.

A devalued dollar means devalued or even junk savings. This is a very
dangerous possibility. It destroys the incentive to work hard, take
risk, or innovate, which would expedite the process of the economic
collapse.

The lesson from the collapse of the Soviet Union EMPIRE is that when it
happens the US forces in the 700 military basis overseas will not even
be able to come back in a dignified way. Soviet troops stayed in Germany
until the German government helped building apartments for them in
Russia. All the Soviet arsenal of nuclear weapons could not prevent the
collapse of the Soviet Union. People don't eat tanks or missiles.

So, yes there have been beneficiaries of the US invasion and occupation
of Iraq. They will continue planning, executing, and defending war now
and in the future until they bankrupt the US, then they move with their
families probably to China or Europe. The US invasion of Iraq and any
other US invasion or war is good news and a great or even an astounding
success for these war beneficiaries.

But the war has been horrendous in its effect on the losers, who have to
wake up and do something about their own destiny. Otherwise, they have
only themselves to blame.

The US middle and working classes need to get out to the streets
demanding an immediate end to the war. Waiting until a democrat wins
presidential elections may not be the right thing to do. God knows what
tricks and manipulations may be applied in the coming months to prevent
this from happening.

For those middle class and working class supporters of the war, who
tolerate the violation of their fellow Americans' civil rights, wake up!